Wounded
by Verthanthi
Summary: Prompted: Marcy gets hurt, Bonni cares for her. Light PB/M


A/N: Prompt from wordhockey: Marcy gets hurt, Bonni cares for her.

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To anyone who might have the misfortune of stumbling upon it, Marceline's blood trail would probably look spooky, she thought vaguely. She was pretty okay with that, though, because in all honesty (being a vampire and all), she went for spooky. Her blood was thick, oozy, and dark against the blue carpet where it had fallen, _plop_. It hadn't been a normal red color in about, oh, 983 years, maybe?

Marceline felt immensely exhausted as her head fell back against the cushion of her own couch, her wounds had oozed quite a bit on her journey home and quite a bit more when they had been made fresh. She sat on her own floor for the first time in, well… ever. Hovering took up too much energy and she could swear she felt gravity pull the liquid from her veins, gelatinous as it was. Finn wasn't lying when he likened her couch cushions to rocks. They were definitely rocks. They rocked so hard, Marceline wondered drowsily if she should feel jealous. She let out a little chuckle at that as she closed her eyes, sleep coming on hard and fast. Nah, she rocked harder than any rock in Ooo. Definitely.

"This is nothing to be giggling about, you… you baboon!" Bonnibel's sharp snap pulled Marceline out of her bleary stupor.

She tried to ask Bonni, "Baboon? Didn't baboons go extinct a millennia ago?" but the questions didn't have the energy pass through her teeth; they died in her throat. Flashes of Bonni faded in and out of her consciousness, along with Bonni's anxious voice asking too many questions, demanding too many answers. Marceline was tired, far too tired to try anything besides blinking slowly at the woman pulling her injured limbs this way and that as she rattled off queries. Comprehension was out of the question.

Marceline fell into sleep unwillingly, dragged there by exhaustion and because that same pesky gravity was pulling the blood from her wounds. She woke up after some time, and for a few moments, she vaguely wondered where she was. Oh, that was her ceiling, and there was her rocky couch to the left. Home, she was home. On the floor. Marceline tried to gather her thoughts, but there was a haze about her mind that she couldn't navigate. As things began to clear slowly, her stomach called a hungry gurgle.

A soft voice answered it, and Marceline didn't feel the least bit alarmed, "I see you've decided to regain consciousness. Welcome back," a pause, then, "Are you hungry?"

Marceline rolled her head to the side to look at the woman who sat beside her. Bonnibel. Marceline wanted to offer a greeting, even something snarky would suffice, but she could only manage a small, "Yes."

An apple seemingly appeared from nowhere in particular and bopped Marcy right in the nose. The vampire laughed weakly, as much of one as she could muster, and, instead of taking it from Bonni, she simply stuck her fangs into it and drank deeply. She could feel the nourishing color seep into her bones, could feel the energy growing in her stomach to spread through each nerve, and she felt instantly better. Not great, no, but good enough. Maybe good enough to sit up, she wondered, but that proved to be false as her arms wobbled and collapsed to the floor again under the tiny amount of pressure she put on them.

Bonni pressed a hand to her shoulder to dissuade her from trying again. "Enough," the princess demanded firmly. Marceline, still lacking the energy needed to argue, decided to comply. She saw Bonni look up and down her prone body, probably assessing the damage. "I wrapped most of your lacerations, the largest ones, anyway," Bonni told her matter-of-factly, adjusting a bandage on Marceline's arm so it was secure. "Interestingly enough," she continued with piqued curiosity, "some of the smaller ones healed as soon as you drained that apple." Pink fingers trailed lightly across a patch of tender grey skin, probably where a lesser scratch had been, and Marceline winced. Bonnibel retracted her hand from Marceline's shoulder quickly. "Ah. My apologies. It must still be sensitive."

"Mm," Marceline agreed. She watched Bonnibel as the princess dropped her attentions to the bandages again, twisting this, tightening that. Finally, satisfied that they were properly snug, Bonni considered the expanse of slightly tangled, dark curls that billowed around Marcy's head before gently brushing them to the side and settling into their place above her. Sitting cross-legged, elbow to knee, she plopped her chin rather ungracefully into her palm, very unlike a princess, Marceline considered, and then Bonni studied the vampire quietly. Marceline thought that there might be tired, dark circles under the woman's eyes elsewise the shadows were lingering there to tease her, she wasn't sure. "How long was I out?" she managed to ask, tilting her head up to look at her make-shift doctor.

"Two days," Bonni replied gravely. Marceline balked, tried to sit up in her shock, failed miserably again and fell back to the floor with a grimace and a hiss through her teeth. Bonni was laughing, looking somewhat pleased. As she shifted with her laughter, the dark circles faded, Marceline silently cursed the shadows for the trick they'd played on her, making her believe that Bonni looked tired. "Two hours," Bonni corrected, tilting her head toward the vampire while offering an apologetic, albeit amused smile.

That whole trick had lifted the haze from Marceline's thoughts fairly well. "What the stuff, Bon?" Marceline huffed, feigning irritation while she couldn't help but smirk in amusement despite herself. "I guess I can assume I'll be okay… If you're willing to tease me." She paused, her mind trailing off to capture thoughts about how much she enjoyed Bonni's company, her pointed jabs, the way she gave Marceline little smiles that, quite honestly, Marceline had never seen her offer to anyone else. Her wounds throbbed then, reminding her that, yes, they were still there, and no, the pain wouldn't fade for a while. "How am I, Doc?" Marceline asked, tilting her head back again to meet Bonni's gaze, "Will I make it?"

Bonnibel placed both hands against the floor on either side of Marcy's temples. She stared at Marceline intently, as though she were readying herself for the important news. With a steady inhale and exhale preceding, she said to Marceline, "How should I know?" Her eyebrows lifted questioningly with the smile she offered to the bemused vampire. "You've never let me run the appropriate tests on you, Marceline," she explained, with a quick shrug of her shoulders, "All I can tell you is that you _are_ healing, but you do have some severe wounds. I can't be sure how long these will take to heal. A day, a week, I have no data to reference."

Marceline chuckled, and then voiced a thought, "Are you recording my data now?"

Bonnibel didn't hesitate with the truth as she looked Marcy square in the eyes. Marceline always liked that about their relationship. "Yes." The vampire expected no less.

Another thought occurred, "You put my blood into vials."

Bonnibel pressed her lips into a thin line. She must have known Marceline wouldn't like this. "Yes," she repeated, but Marceline didn't have the will to argue this time. Maybe she'd pay a visit to Bonni's lab later to filch back what she didn't want the scientist to have, but for now, she just wanted to rest. She was still watching the princess who looked upside down to her from their positions on the floor. Before Marceline could ask, and she was about to, Bonni went on to explain how she found out about Marceline's condition.

After their adventure together, Finn and Jake suspected something was wrong with the vampire, more than she was letting on. She'd passed off her wounds as though they were menial to a vampire queen, but in reality, she hadn't been so brutally injured in quite some time. She wasn't afraid of death, but she knew that she needed to get home to rest as quickly as possible. The boys, also not entirely unscathed from the fight, sought out their favorite princess to tend to their wounds and, when they'd explained Marceline's behavior and the look of her injuries, Princess Bubblegum insisted she pay her old friend a visit. Bonnibel told her, with a fond smile, that it took all her efforts to stop the boys from tagging along.

Bonni finished her account of the situation and stopped fiddling with the bit of Marceline's hair that she'd toyed with throughout her explanation. As she cast a sidelong glance at Marceline, the vampire couldn't really read her expression. "Did you have fun?" She asked simply, tilting her head towards the prone woman once again.

Marceline pondered for a moment, thinking of the adventure, the quest, the ultimate boss battle, and a smile crept to her lips. Her fangs peeped through as the smile became a satisfied grin. "I did," she answered confidently.

Bonnibel seemed neither pleased nor displeased, only contemplative. She lifted her knees and half hugged them, resting her palm against one knee, placing her head on the top of that hand. She lifted her free hand to Marceline's forehead and rapped a single knuckle against it. "There was a lot of blood, Marcy," she murmured quietly.

Marceline kept silent, the grin fading quickly, feeling a little ashamed, a little embarrassed to be seen like this. To be seen by Bonnibel _like this_. She wondered at that for a moment, wondered why she always felt an uncomfortable twist in her chest under Bonni's worried gazes, at Bonni's brow creased in concern. Wondered why it mattered to keep cool and confident in front of the woman who knew her best, knew she was usually neither of those things. She decided she wanted Bonni to go, to leave her and take the uncomfortable chest twists with her, and as she opened her mouth to say so, she found herself unable to voice the words. The twists had grown larger, not only knotting her stomach, but clenching vice-like over her vocal chords when she thought of Bonni leaving.

Bonni's free suddenly hand combed its way through Marceline's hair, startling her. As she glanced up to look at the princess, she found that Bonni had her eyes closed; she looked content. Bonni's hand reached the end of Marceline's long locks and reset, coming back up to begin again at her scalp. The vampire found it soothing as Bonni's short nails gently scratched against her head on its descent through her loosely tangled mane and changed her mind about asking her visitor to leave. A long comfortable silence enveloped them, Marceline listening to Bonni's quiet breaths, Bonni running her fingers gently through soft, raven hair. Something Bonnibel said when she'd first arrived made its way into Marceline's languid thoughts and she just had to know, "How do you know what a baboon is?"

Bonni raised a single eyebrow, looking down at her imperiously, but the corner of her lip twitching with mirth. "Please, Marcy. I _read_."

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A/N: Thanks for reading!


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